Open Letter from John Minto to Willie Apiata

Kia ora Willie,

It’s a long way from Te Kaha to Kabul but our newspapers have been full of big photos of you last week emerging from a house in the Afghani capital where three “insurgents” lay dead after a firefight.

PM John Key didn’t like the pictures. He’s been at pains to say you weren’t involved in the killing. He wants you and the SAS to be invisible in Afghanistan. He says photos like that endanger our soldiers but really it’s to keep New Zealand’s involvement unseen. Being part of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is not popular anywhere except perhaps the corporate boardrooms of the US military-industrial complex. Wars are hugely profitable for those who make guns and bombs but most of our trading partners don’t like it and the PM wants a low profile in this war – just enough to let the US leadership know we are on their side but not enough to be noticed elsewhere.

So why were you deployed to Afghanistan? Around the world public opinion is strongly against occupying the country and New Zealanders are ambivalent. Credible polls in Afghanistan itself show the people there want all foreign troops out of the country. And so you’re fighting a coalition of local groupings who’ve joined together to fight their common enemy – that’s you Willie.

If Afghanistan were left alone there would be more bloodshed, but less than at present, but over time the civil society infrastructure would develop and the likes of the religious extremists would be marginalized. This is the common experience throughout history.

Meanwhile the regime you’re propping up has no legitimacy. President Hamed Khazai was re-elected in a fraudulent poll last year and his regime is a coalition of drug barons, war lords and fraudsters. So why are you offering him a crutch? It’s in US interests to keep Kharzai’s regime on life support but why are you helping?

You are following a long line of New Zealanders who’ve gone to the other side of the world to fight other peoples’ wars. Your ancestors left Te Kaha and the East Coast to join wars on the other side of the world at government behest. In fact per head of population New Zealand sent more young men to fight and die in World War I than any other country and we sent them to the other side of the globe to do it.

I guess this gives us some kind of notoriety. The Vikings, Spanish Armada, Alexander the Great, Hannibal and the Crusades had nothing on New Zealanders. We sent the largest ever fighting force the greatest distance in the history of mankind to fight someone else’s war.

You’re not fighting an imperial war for the British empire this time Willie, as was WWI, but a war in Afghanistan on behalf of the US empire.

As for heroes I’ve always thought the real war heroes are those who strive to prevent war rather than those who fight them. It takes courage to rescue a fellow soldier under fire but took far more courage for Adrian Leason, Sam Land and Peter Murnane to pop the rubber dome at the US spybase at Waihopai and expose New Zealand’s roll in US wars.

These three are true kiwi heroes Willie. They are part of the solution while you are part of the problem.

So we are back to the question: Why are you there Willie? The only viable reason for our government to put your life at risk is because our political and business elites want a free trade agreement with the US.

The irony is a free trade agreement is not in New Zealand’s interests but the interests of our elites. Free trade will reduce well paid jobs here for your extended family and other kiwis and replace them with poorly paid casualised jobs in service industries.

Not much to be risking your life for is it?

Yours sincerely,
John Minto

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